About

Afterlives of Slavery is a digital encyclopedia created by undergraduate students at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Emerging from Saidiya Hartman’s insight that the legacy of US slavery has profoundly shaped contemporary political and cultural life, this project explores how writers, artists, and performers respond to and remake that legacy. Each encyclopedia essay provides information on a cultural text from the last thirty years that takes up slavery as a theme or motif. In visual art, literature, film, television, and other cultural forms, representations of slavery connect the past to the present. Afterlives of Slavery explores how creative works respond to the social and material legacy of slavery and shape our understanding of the contemporary world.

This project is directed by Dr. Anna Ioanes. You can learn more about the assignment here.